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A Political History of the Future

A Political History of the future is my irregular series at the political blog Lawyers, Guns & Money. In it I discuss genre works that address progressive political issues such as inequality, labor rights, and civil rights. I also talk about how SF constructs its future worlds on the level of politics, economics, and social organization, and how these future worlds can suggest new ways of ordering society, for good and evil.

Introduction - Lays out my vision for the series and includes a list of works that exemplify some of the issues I'd like to discuss. January 14th, 2018

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz - Newitz's 2017 debut novel imagines a world where most work is done by sentient automatons, and where the personhood of both these AIs and the humans they've displaced is inextricably linked to their market value. February 4th, 2018

Black Panther- How the MCU's first black-led movie builds an Afrofuturist fantasy world that grapples head-on with the question of liberal utopias, and what their responsibility is to the rest of the world. February 19th, 2018

Altered Carbon - Discusses the novel by Richard Morgan and the 2018 Netflix series adaptation, both about a world where personhood can be transferred from one body to another, leading to massive changes in law enforcement and economics. March 13th, 2018

The Expanse- In anticipation of the SyFy series's third season, a discussion of how it depicts labor issues and the exploitation of the underclass, and how these are often neglected in favor of an adventure plot. April 9th, 2018

The City & The City - Discusses the novel by China Miéville and the 2018 BBC miniseries adaptation, both set in a city where inhabitants "unsee" each other despite living side-by-side. May 6th, 2018

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente - On Valente's comic novel, in which humanity is forced to compete in space-Eurovision, and how very little SFF worldbuilding leaves space for art, culture, and characters who create and consume both. June 10th, 2018

Tacoma - Discusses the Fullbright Company's 2017 game, in which the exploration of an abandoned space station in 2088 leads to revelations about how this corporatized near-future functions, and how people can still fight back. July 9th, 2018

Humans - On the Channel 4/AMC TV show in which human-seeming androids take over most jobs in the service economy, and how the show's middle class focus offers some interesting riffs on a familiar premise. September 9th, 2018

Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee - The concluding volume of Lee's Machineries of Empire trilogy gives me an excuse to discuss how these books depict totalitarianism, and the way it entraps citizens in mindsets that make it impossible to break free. September 28th, 2018

State Tectonics by Malka Older - Older's Centennal Cycle is a rare work of science fiction that tries to imagine the future of democracy, and how the pitfalls currently afflicting it might be addressed by technology. November 26th, 2018